Renewable energy to be focus of policy

With the NDA government bullish on increasing the share of power generation through non-conventional resources, the focus of the National Energy Policy, which is likely to be prepared by December this year, is on ways to hike renewable energy transmission over the next five years. It will at the same time, also suggest ways to balance power generation through both conventional as well as non-conventional sources.

The NEP, an ambitious endeavour of the NDA government, is being drafted by the Niti Aayog, and according to official sources the think tank has completed its consultations with various ministries, departments as well as research institutions, and will by December 2015 prepare the draft policy. It is said to largely focus on ways to improve the output of all demand based energy sources namely power, oil and gas, sources added.

The draft NEP is likely to be sent to the Prime Minister’s office once it is finalised in December, for approval. Sources said that after it is cleared by the PMO, work may start on finalising it as soon as possible. The genesis of the NEP was the speech by President Pranab Mukherjee in June 2014, which he had delivered during the first Joint Sitting of Parliament soon after the NDA government had been formed at the Centre. He had said in his speech that the Centre plans to come out with a comprehensive policy on energy.

The President had informed that the government would be unveiling a policy which would focus on balancing power generation through conventional and non-conventional sources Sources aware of the development said that while renewable energy generation, which is the Prime Minister’s pet subject, will be a part of the NEP, the main focus of the policy would be on how to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of major energy sources like oil, gas and power.

As these energy sources are heavily demand based, it is pertinent to ensure that their supply is not hampered while fulfilling the requirement of the country’s population, sou-rces added. It is important to keep focus on improving renewable energy generation also.

In fact strengthening of the National Solar Mission is also likely to be an important aspect of the NEP. This mission which was launched in January 2010, has a target of deploying 20,000 mw of grid connected solar power by 2022 and reduce the cost of solar power generation in the country through long term policy, large scale deployment goals, aggressive R&D and domestic production of critical raw materials, components and products.

Moreover with the Government having set for itself an ambitious target of achieving 175 gega watt (gw) of renewable energy generation by 2021-22 from the current 38 gw, the NEP is going to focus on ways of achieving this, sources said.